For each tool you find include a sample and a 500 word summary (that includes age appropriateness, how to use in the classroom, safety, and your opinion about the tool)
Review and Evaluate 10 Web 2.0 Tools that have not been used in class
Team Leader: Bonnie Holly and Brooke
Prezi by Bonnie Jordan
John Dewey, an educational philosopher, once said “TEACHERS: give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking, or the intentional noting of connections; learning naturally results.”
Teachers and students have become bored and overwhelmed with conventional classroom presentations such as PowerPoints. PowerPoint presentations are filled with multiple slides that give too much detail in short amounts of time. Prezi is a cloud-based presentation software and storytelling tool for presenting ideas on a virtual canvas. Teachers and students can benefit from Prezi’s zooming canvas concept which opens up the classroom to active learning making lessons fun and memorable.
Active learning is one of the most effective ways to maintain student engagement; modern educators are turning to technology to create engaging, experiential learning environments for their students. Teachers are also using technology to administer frequent student assessments to see where students are in the learning process.
Prezi is a free tool for educators, students and anyone in the public. Prezi does offer private presentation and pro presentations for additional pricing. The most expensive package for Prezi is $13.25 a month. Prezi can be used by teachers and students to collaborate on presentations with more than one person. Users will have the ability to edit the same presentation, and allow students to construct and present their knowledge in their own learning style. Prezi is a great tool for students working in groups that cannot meet up after school and also online learners. They are still able to work together on the internet.
I feel that Prezi is probably best used by teachers in lower grades to make their lessons more interesting and engaging for students. Prezi is a wonderful tool for students in higher grades. I would say third grade and up would benefit very much by using Prezi for book reports, group projects and research projects. You can use Prezi for any subject. Prezi is a blank canvas for you to make into an interesting lesson for your students or interesting presentations for your teacher.
Prezi is a safe web 2 tool for all students to use. However I do feel that students should not put any personal information on the internet for other people to abuse. I think as long as they are not putting any personal information within their presentation that are open to public viewing they should be fine.
The down fall of Prezi in my opinion sometimes is with Prezi’s you can lose your audience within the visual effects of your presentation. Visual effects are there to engage people in the presentation so you don’t want to lose your message within the effects of the Prezi presentation. The visual effects are just hooks on which your audience hangs their memories on. When the hook gets more attention than the message you are trying to convey, you have the beginnings of a problem. So educators should learn to walk that line between presenting too much and too little. Overall I feel that Prezi is a great web 2 tool for teachers and students to use.
Weebly By Bonnie Jordan
Weebly is a free site creator. Weebly is surprisingly easy to use. You can create your own website or blog completely for free. However they do offer more features for your site for an extra fee even with that said they are still reasonably priced.
Weebly is so user friendly that over 15 million people have created websites using Weebly. Weebly offers a free online website creator. It uses a simple widget based site builder that operates in the web browser. All of Weebly’s site elements are drag-and-drop which allows the most unexperienced user to create something new and exciting. The drag and drop feature is great for when children are using this. Weebly automatically generates a mobile version of each website so you can access your site from any mobile device such as phones and tablets. With that said for students who don’t have computers at home but have tablets or maybe their parents have phones. They will still be able to work collaboratively with their groups on projects. Weebly allows the site creators to use a subdomain name if one is available. I was excited to learn of this web 2 tool not just for my career as an educator but also for personal use. Another advantage with using Weebly is that Weebly offers storage which is unlimited they do have a certain file size though.
Weebly would be a great tool for educators and students to use because you can create class websites that the class worked on together. I would say students in grades as low as third grade could proficiently use this web 2 tools. The class can post pictures, projects and accomplishments to showcase on their own class site. This is especially great for talking with parents and students away from school. Weebly offers blogging which is a great tool for students to work on group projects together and be able to get feedback from everyone in the group including teacher feedback.
When creating your website Weebly offers a wide variety of modern themes to choose from to keep up with the times and most of all the students’ interest. The only concern I really have about Weebly.com is the safely. With Weebly can you create a public or private site or blog. However when you are creating a public site please take into account students safety.. So you would require permission from parents and I would personally have an internet safety lesson before and after using Weebly with my students.
Zooburst
By Bonnie Jordan
Zooburst is a great digital storytelling tools that allow anyone to create their own 3D pop-up book. Zooburst has a great app that allows students and teachers to use Zooburst on their mobile devices making this a great web 2 tools more accessible. Creators can arrange characters and props within a 3D world however they please. Students also will have the capability to customize their own book by using uploaded artwork or pictures of their own. Other images can also be found in the built-in database of over 10,000 free images and materials. That is a lot of fun resources at your fingertips literally.
Zooburst creators can share their books with other people using a simple hyperlink, and books can also easily be embedded in any website or blog. Teachers or students can also orchestrate a discussion forum for each book, so they can receive feedback on their handy work. Zooburst provides a cool virtual space in which readers can talk with one another. This is also a great time to have an internet safety refresher.
I think this web 2 tool is very cool and fresh. I feel that it is more than appropriate for k-6 users and also for teachers to create their own stories that might tie into some lessons. I would use this for a literary unit with my class. I feel that letting your students become instant authors will engage and encourage them to read and use their critical thinking skills.
ClassDojo By Bonnie Jordan
Class dojo is a behavioral tool used by teacher’s right in the classroom and in no time. Teacher spends a big portion of their day managing behavior instead of focusing on teaching. ClassDojo has been said to improve the time that teachers spend on disciplining their students during the day. ClassDojo allows the teacher to focus on educating the students instead of controlling them. Instead of disrupting class to call a student out on a behavioral issue you can turn instantly and notify that student privately with just one click. This is also a positive behavioral tool will engage students interest and good behaviors. It is so important for the parents to be involved what is going on in the classroom as well as out of the classroom. With ClassDojo they have a really awesome behavior tracking analytics and reports that you can give to the parents and administrators to keep everyone informed and up to date. This is such a great feature especially with dual parenting.
ClassDojo says it best when they said “For students: research suggests the shorter the time period between an action and feedback for that action, the greater is the effect of the reinforcement. Specific positive reinforcement helps students develop a sense of purpose in the classroom, enhancing intrinsic motivation over time. By giving students visibility and data on their own behavior, ClassDojo makes class less disruptive and creates a more positive learning environment.” In the end we are trying to prepare are students to walk in this competitive academic and technological world that we all live and work in today. This tool will allow the teacher to focus educating the students instead of disciplining them.
reference www.classdojo.com/about
PENZU CLASSROOM- HOLLY TURNER
Penzu Classroom is for teacher to keep track of assignment and documents. This web 2.0 tool is easy to use all the teacher has to do is signup for an account and create a Classroom journal. Each journal will have a code for the teacher to give the students. The students each have to sign up and enter the code and that allows them to be in the teacher’s classroom. Teachers can create the assignment for all the students to look at. Every assignment can have a description, title, grading scheme, and due date. With each assignment the student can comment and ask questions they may have. Each time a new assignment is assigned it sends an email. The email could even be the parents so they could stay on top of their child’s learning. This tool has a great grading system that allows the teacher to give feedback on each assignment in their own writing. I think this tool would be great for student grade 6th and up. I would use this tool in my classroom as a journal for the students to get on each week to tell what they are doing well in and what they need a little help with. I would also use this if I was assigning a paper. I liked this tool but it may be hard to use if students do not have access to the internet at home. This web2.0 tool is safe with military-grade encryption.
KAHOOT!- HOLLY TURNER
Kahoot is a game-based response system for school. This tool asks questions that motivate participation through game-based learning and is rewarding in a social setting. The students get to take control of their own learning. Kahoot is highly engaging, inclusive, and easy to use. To use this tool you create quizzes, surveys, and discussions by using any device that has a web browser like, iPad, iPhone, MacBook, laptop, and many more. The student can join without needing an account and the class focuses in the front projector screen. Each student puts in their name or nickname and this allow the teacher to do assessments of the students while they are playing. This tool is appropriate for all ages in all school. This tool is very different from classroom response systems. It is learner-centric, game-based pedagogy with academic research, social in both senses, and the teacher can understand, and adapt with the data. Kahoot allows the classroom to flip to a pedagogy based on encouraging a loop from ‘learner to leader’.
I think this tool allows students to be a part of learning and gets them excited about learning. This would be a great tool for all ages and I could see myself using this in my classroom. This allows teacher s to do formative assessments on all students. The great thing is each student can put in a nickname and the other students will never know how well each student is doing. This allows for each student to have privacy. I am a teacher assistant in the seventh grade and all the teachers at Heritage use this tool and find it to be a great use of their time. Every time the teachers chose to use this activity you can just tell how anxious each student is to start and try to get the most correct answers. This website is very safe and easy to use.
Survey Monkey- Holly Turner
Survey Monkey is for students, parents, staff, and administrators. It is fast by launching surveys in minutes, getting results, and turning data into decisions about what needs to change or stay the same. By using this it gives you the opportunity to use technology to get closer to students, staff, and parents. This tool can help understand what the faculty needs and get feedback from students on how well they are doing in the class, what is working for them , what they need help on or what they would like to change about the class. Online surveys can give data that will improve programs, processes, and overall achievement. The students, parents, staff, and administrators can benefit for using professional education survey. There are many ways that teaching staff and administrators can use online surveys to improve their educational system. Assess family/school relationships by creating a survey to learn more aspects of family/school relationships that drive student outcome. Educational outcome, public school survey, preschool parent survey, school climate survey, evaluate online learning programs, course evaluation feedback, student survey, teacher survey, curriculum planning, special trips, school performances, and faculty satisfaction are example of surveys that can be used for educational purposes. To create a survey all you have to do is use easy question creation with 15 question types that include multiple choice, rating scales, and more or create from scratch. Also, it has a certified question bank. Then use the custom branding, advanced features, reach the right people, collect responses, and get report. The Survey Monkey website gives three starting tips, “Keep it short and focused. Make sure each question brings you closer to your goal. Be mindful of survey takers’ time, and word the questions clearly. A good rule of thumb is your survey should take no more than ten minutes to complete.” “Pre-test your survey. It’s a good idea to pre-test your survey with a few members of your intended audience. You might uncover inconsistencies or unexpected question interpretations.” “Keep rating scale questions consistent. If you’re using rating scales, use the same points system throughout your survey. If 1 means “extremely satisfied” and 5 means “extremely dissatisfied,” maintain this scale for all questions.”(SurveyMonkey https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/education-surveys/)
I think this would be a great tool to use in all school systems. It allows you to get information from student, parents, and teachers. This would be a great tool to use to find out if the students understood the lesson. Each night the student could go home and take a survey that would allow the teacher to see if the student understood the objectives each day. Also, teachers could use this in class to see which way each student prefers to learn. Teacher could also have a survey that allows the parents to be a part of their child’s learning experience. This would be helpful for staff to take a survey before staff meeting to let administration know how well things are going in the class. I could defiantly see myself using this tool starting in third grade through six grade.
Story Bird - Brooke Craig
Able to be used as a classroom tool can be used to write and illustrate stories inside a classroom. This is a free tool that is age appropriate for Kindergarten through high school because the information and topic can be applied and altered to fit the age group and the skill level. I like that this tool is able to be a classroom assignment or an individual project. In our classroom at my current job as a teacher assistant, we use this tool for children to take turns working with sequencing of a story. We allow the children to come up with what they think would come next in the story, as well as add a picture to the page. When we are all finished adding to the story, you can go back and reread the information that you have put in allowing this to look like an online book. Another neat feature that I love about this tool is that you are able to publish and share the content of the Story Bird. The story can be saved to your account, can be shared with other public websites, and can be sent and purchased by the author or a reader that enjoyed the story. In an individual project, this would be an excellent tool to use in order to promote technology in your lesson plans. Having a group or a single student write a story that pertains to the information that is being covered at the current time would not only be a formative assessment for you as the teacher, but also a way to encourage creative thinking for the student. Story Bird can be used in an about me lesson as well, allowing children of younger grades to compose and print their book showing all of the things that they would like to share about themselves.
I think as an educator and as a parent that this is one of the safest Web 2.0 tools that can be used in the classroom. I think that this tool would be really hard to turn into an inappropriate matter, just because the pictures are limited, in correlation to the fact that the Story Bird app is on a public website. As far as safety goes, I think that it is always appropriate to have the students give you their log in information so that you can check up on any website that is school related. As a liability issue, it is always smart to be prepared. I personally enjoy this tool and use it often. I think this would be a fun tool to incorporate into your classroom, as well as allowing parents to access and understand for parent/classroom involvement.
Popplet - Brooke Craig
Popplet is a unique way to have children group up and electronically respond to a question. For example, I made a Popplet that says: “What are fun facts about Winter?”, I posted this question in the middle bubble and chose a color background to represent myself. I then went in and gave a few responses which branched out from the middle bubble. For example I said: “the tallest snowman was 113 foot tall”. This was a unique fact that showed up in the same color as the question I posted because I logged in as myself to answer. This would be a fun way to formally assess students’ progress on topic knowledge because you would be able to upload a general question and have students go in and give a response. Each students bubble will appear in a new color, and have their name above the written statement; allowing the teacher to log info given. Another neat feature of Popplet, is that students can respond to each other’s bubbles in order to expand on a statement.
As an educator, I would use this in several ways such as individual knowledge collection, class polls, and even have children make their own for a project grade. I think that Popplet is 3rd through 5th grade appropriate, because it is allowing children to log on and answer questions appropriately. Also, it is more an at home or in lab activity since information given should be researched and well thought out. I also could see this being a study tool for higher grades, since the questions that students have can be posted in the middle bubble and then answered in various ways by fellow students. I would use this as a study tool like we currently use Saki, having students respond to at least two other students posts. I can see that there may be possible issues with this program, such as students not being honest about who they are at login, responding inappropriately to other students’ post, and not taking the course work seriously because it would be electronic. However, I think that any online coursework can pose problems for teachers and students because not all students will follow given directions. I feel that with strong teacher involvement, parent involvement, and strict class electronic rules, this program can be an asset to the classroom.
Bubbl - Brooke Craig
Bubbl is similar to the other Web 2.0 tool that I chose, Popplet; but instead of allowing students to work in groups or as a class, Bubbl allows a single student to work on an online site to brainstorm for a project or paper. The way that Bubbl works is by having students start with an initial idea or statement that will go in the middle of the site. After an initial idea is posted, students are able to create sub categories, here students can type in information that is relevant to the beginning topic. This can go on for 5 or more sub categories, as well as being able to type in sub headers for information that may be important to your topic. Another neat factor is that you can go in and list or star the information by importance. While Popplet is able to be used in order to obtain a grade, I think Bubbl can prove just as effective since the information can be viewed online. This can be helpful in many ways for the student, teacher, and parent to see the progress of the information gathering process. This would be helpful in the situation that a student is confused and needs some guidance, has illegible handwriting, or if you need to report the information that is being gathered to a parent or resource worker.
While Bubbl is helpful, I can see that there are a few negatives that can be seen in the process, such as: children being lost in the information, repeating information, or writing information that is not helpful to the topic or subject. However, I feel that as a teacher having access to this Bubbl would pose as a benefit to the student because I would be able to guide the data collection process by seeing and informing the children of where they are at in the process. Overall, Bubbl is helpful in a higher level class setting such as fourth through sixth grade; as well as beneficial to myself as I complete my DOC paper!
Review and Evaluate 10 Web 2.0 Tools that have not been used in class
Team Leader: Bonnie
Holly and Brooke
Prezi
by Bonnie Jordan
John Dewey, an educational philosopher, once said “TEACHERS: give the pupils something to do, not something to learn; and the doing is of such a nature as to demand thinking, or the intentional noting of connections; learning naturally results.”
Teachers and students have become bored and overwhelmed with conventional classroom presentations such as PowerPoints. PowerPoint presentations are filled with multiple slides that give too much detail in short amounts of time. Prezi is a cloud-based presentation software and storytelling tool for presenting ideas on a virtual canvas. Teachers and students can benefit from Prezi’s zooming canvas concept which opens up the classroom to active learning making lessons fun and memorable.
Active learning is one of the most effective ways to maintain student engagement; modern educators are turning to technology to create engaging, experiential learning environments for their students. Teachers are also using technology to administer frequent student assessments to see where students are in the learning process.
Prezi is a free tool for educators, students and anyone in the public. Prezi does offer private presentation and pro presentations for additional pricing. The most expensive package for Prezi is $13.25 a month. Prezi can be used by teachers and students to collaborate on presentations with more than one person. Users will have the ability to edit the same presentation, and allow students to construct and present their knowledge in their own learning style. Prezi is a great tool for students working in groups that cannot meet up after school and also online learners. They are still able to work together on the internet.
I feel that Prezi is probably best used by teachers in lower grades to make their lessons more interesting and engaging for students. Prezi is a wonderful tool for students in higher grades. I would say third grade and up would benefit very much by using Prezi for book reports, group projects and research projects. You can use Prezi for any subject. Prezi is a blank canvas for you to make into an interesting lesson for your students or interesting presentations for your teacher.
Prezi is a safe web 2 tool for all students to use. However I do feel that students should not put any personal information on the internet for other people to abuse. I think as long as they are not putting any personal information within their presentation that are open to public viewing they should be fine.
The down fall of Prezi in my opinion sometimes is with Prezi’s you can lose your audience within the visual effects of your presentation. Visual effects are there to engage people in the presentation so you don’t want to lose your message within the effects of the Prezi presentation. The visual effects are just hooks on which your audience hangs their memories on. When the hook gets more attention than the message you are trying to convey, you have the beginnings of a problem. So educators should learn to walk that line between presenting too much and too little. Overall I feel that Prezi is a great web 2 tool for teachers and students to use.
Weebly
By Bonnie Jordan
Weebly is a free site creator. Weebly is surprisingly easy to use. You can create your own website or blog completely for free. However they do offer more features for your site for an extra fee even with that said they are still reasonably priced.
Weebly is so user friendly that over 15 million people have created websites using Weebly. Weebly offers a free online website creator. It uses a simple widget based site builder that operates in the web browser. All of Weebly’s site elements are drag-and-drop which allows the most unexperienced user to create something new and exciting. The drag and drop feature is great for when children are using this. Weebly automatically generates a mobile version of each website so you can access your site from any mobile device such as phones and tablets. With that said for students who don’t have computers at home but have tablets or maybe their parents have phones. They will still be able to work collaboratively with their groups on projects. Weebly allows the site creators to use a subdomain name if one is available. I was excited to learn of this web 2 tool not just for my career as an educator but also for personal use. Another advantage with using Weebly is that Weebly offers storage which is unlimited they do have a certain file size though.
Weebly would be a great tool for educators and students to use because you can create class websites that the class worked on together. I would say students in grades as low as third grade could proficiently use this web 2 tools. The class can post pictures, projects and accomplishments to showcase on their own class site. This is especially great for talking with parents and students away from school. Weebly offers blogging which is a great tool for students to work on group projects together and be able to get feedback from everyone in the group including teacher feedback.
When creating your website Weebly offers a wide variety of modern themes to choose from to keep up with the times and most of all the students’ interest. The only concern I really have about Weebly.com is the safely. With Weebly can you create a public or private site or blog. However when you are creating a public site please take into account students safety.. So you would require permission from parents and I would personally have an internet safety lesson before and after using Weebly with my students.
Zooburst
By Bonnie Jordan
Zooburst is a great digital storytelling tools that allow anyone to create their own 3D pop-up book. Zooburst has a great app that allows students and teachers to use Zooburst on their mobile devices making this a great web 2 tools more accessible. Creators can arrange characters and props within a 3D world however they please. Students also will have the capability to customize their own book by using uploaded artwork or pictures of their own. Other images can also be found in the built-in database of over 10,000 free images and materials. That is a lot of fun resources at your fingertips literally.
Zooburst creators can share their books with other people using a simple hyperlink, and books can also easily be embedded in any website or blog. Teachers or students can also orchestrate a discussion forum for each book, so they can receive feedback on their handy work. Zooburst provides a cool virtual space in which readers can talk with one another. This is also a great time to have an internet safety refresher.
I think this web 2 tool is very cool and fresh. I feel that it is more than appropriate for k-6 users and also for teachers to create their own stories that might tie into some lessons. I would use this for a literary unit with my class. I feel that letting your students become instant authors will engage and encourage them to read and use their critical thinking skills.
ClassDojo
By Bonnie Jordan
Class dojo is a behavioral tool used by teacher’s right in the classroom and in no time. Teacher spends a big portion of their day managing behavior instead of focusing on teaching. ClassDojo has been said to improve the time that teachers spend on disciplining their students during the day. ClassDojo allows the teacher to focus on educating the students instead of controlling them. Instead of disrupting class to call a student out on a behavioral issue you can turn instantly and notify that student privately with just one click. This is also a positive behavioral tool will engage students interest and good behaviors. It is so important for the parents to be involved what is going on in the classroom as well as out of the classroom. With ClassDojo they have a really awesome behavior tracking analytics and reports that you can give to the parents and administrators to keep everyone informed and up to date. This is such a great feature especially with dual parenting.
ClassDojo says it best when they said “For students: research suggests the shorter the time period between an action and feedback for that action, the greater is the effect of the reinforcement. Specific positive reinforcement helps students develop a sense of purpose in the classroom, enhancing intrinsic motivation over time. By giving students visibility and data on their own behavior, ClassDojo makes class less disruptive and creates a more positive learning environment.” In the end we are trying to prepare are students to walk in this competitive academic and technological world that we all live and work in today. This tool will allow the teacher to focus educating the students instead of disciplining them.
reference www.classdojo.com/about
PENZU CLASSROOM- HOLLY TURNER
Penzu Classroom is for teacher to keep track of assignment and documents. This web 2.0 tool is easy to use all the teacher has to do is signup for an account and create a Classroom journal. Each journal will have a code for the teacher to give the students. The students each have to sign up and enter the code and that allows them to be in the teacher’s classroom. Teachers can create the assignment for all the students to look at. Every assignment can have a description, title, grading scheme, and due date. With each assignment the student can comment and ask questions they may have. Each time a new assignment is assigned it sends an email. The email could even be the parents so they could stay on top of their child’s learning. This tool has a great grading system that allows the teacher to give feedback on each assignment in their own writing. I think this tool would be great for student grade 6th and up. I would use this tool in my classroom as a journal for the students to get on each week to tell what they are doing well in and what they need a little help with. I would also use this if I was assigning a paper. I liked this tool but it may be hard to use if students do not have access to the internet at home. This web2.0 tool is safe with military-grade encryption.KAHOOT!- HOLLY TURNER
Kahoot is a game-based response system for school. This tool asks questions that motivate participation through game-based learning and is rewarding in a social setting. The students get to take control of their own learning. Kahoot is highly engaging, inclusive, and easy to use. To use this tool you create quizzes, surveys, and discussions by using any device that has a web browser like, iPad, iPhone, MacBook, laptop, and many more. The student can join without needing an account and the class focuses in the front projector screen. Each student puts in their name or nickname and this allow the teacher to do assessments of the students while they are playing. This tool is appropriate for all ages in all school. This tool is very different from classroom response systems. It is learner-centric, game-based pedagogy with academic research, social in both senses, and the teacher can understand, and adapt with the data. Kahoot allows the classroom to flip to a pedagogy based on encouraging a loop from ‘learner to leader’.I think this tool allows students to be a part of learning and gets them excited about learning. This would be a great tool for all ages and I could see myself using this in my classroom. This allows teacher s to do formative assessments on all students. The great thing is each student can put in a nickname and the other students will never know how well each student is doing. This allows for each student to have privacy. I am a teacher assistant in the seventh grade and all the teachers at Heritage use this tool and find it to be a great use of their time. Every time the teachers chose to use this activity you can just tell how anxious each student is to start and try to get the most correct answers. This website is very safe and easy to use.
Survey Monkey- Holly Turner
Survey Monkey is for students, parents, staff, and administrators. It is fast by launching surveys in minutes, getting results, and turning data into decisions about what needs to change or stay the same. By using this it gives you the opportunity to use technology to get closer to students, staff, and parents. This tool can help understand what the faculty needs and get feedback from students on how well they are doing in the class, what is working for them , what they need help on or what they would like to change about the class. Online surveys can give data that will improve programs, processes, and overall achievement. The students, parents, staff, and administrators can benefit for using professional education survey. There are many ways that teaching staff and administrators can use online surveys to improve their educational system. Assess family/school relationships by creating a survey to learn more aspects of family/school relationships that drive student outcome. Educational outcome, public school survey, preschool parent survey, school climate survey, evaluate online learning programs, course evaluation feedback, student survey, teacher survey, curriculum planning, special trips, school performances, and faculty satisfaction are example of surveys that can be used for educational purposes. To create a survey all you have to do is use easy question creation with 15 question types that include multiple choice, rating scales, and more or create from scratch. Also, it has a certified question bank. Then use the custom branding, advanced features, reach the right people, collect responses, and get report. The Survey Monkey website gives three starting tips, “Keep it short and focused. Make sure each question brings you closer to your goal. Be mindful of survey takers’ time, and word the questions clearly. A good rule of thumb is your survey should take no more than ten minutes to complete.” “Pre-test your survey. It’s a good idea to pre-test your survey with a few members of your intended audience. You might uncover inconsistencies or unexpected question interpretations.” “Keep rating scale questions consistent. If you’re using rating scales, use the same points system throughout your survey. If 1 means “extremely satisfied” and 5 means “extremely dissatisfied,” maintain this scale for all questions.”(SurveyMonkey https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/education-surveys/)
I think this would be a great tool to use in all school systems. It allows you to get information from student, parents, and teachers. This would be a great tool to use to find out if the students understood the lesson. Each night the student could go home and take a survey that would allow the teacher to see if the student understood the objectives each day. Also, teachers could use this in class to see which way each student prefers to learn. Teacher could also have a survey that allows the parents to be a part of their child’s learning experience. This would be helpful for staff to take a survey before staff meeting to let administration know how well things are going in the class. I could defiantly see myself using this tool starting in third grade through six grade.
Story Bird - Brooke Craig
Able to be used as a classroom tool can be used to write and illustrate stories inside a classroom. This is a free tool that is age appropriate for Kindergarten through high school because the information and topic can be applied and altered to fit the age group and the skill level. I like that this tool is able to be a classroom assignment or an individual project. In our classroom at my current job as a teacher assistant, we use this tool for children to take turns working with sequencing of a story. We allow the children to come up with what they think would come next in the story, as well as add a picture to the page. When we are all finished adding to the story, you can go back and reread the information that you have put in allowing this to look like an online book. Another neat feature that I love about this tool is that you are able to publish and share the content of the Story Bird. The story can be saved to your account, can be shared with other public websites, and can be sent and purchased by the author or a reader that enjoyed the story. In an individual project, this would be an excellent tool to use in order to promote technology in your lesson plans. Having a group or a single student write a story that pertains to the information that is being covered at the current time would not only be a formative assessment for you as the teacher, but also a way to encourage creative thinking for the student. Story Bird can be used in an about me lesson as well, allowing children of younger grades to compose and print their book showing all of the things that they would like to share about themselves.
I think as an educator and as a parent that this is one of the safest Web 2.0 tools that can be used in the classroom. I think that this tool would be really hard to turn into an inappropriate matter, just because the pictures are limited, in correlation to the fact that the Story Bird app is on a public website. As far as safety goes, I think that it is always appropriate to have the students give you their log in information so that you can check up on any website that is school related. As a liability issue, it is always smart to be prepared. I personally enjoy this tool and use it often. I think this would be a fun tool to incorporate into your classroom, as well as allowing parents to access and understand for parent/classroom involvement.
Popplet - Brooke Craig
Popplet is a unique way to have children group up and electronically respond to a question. For example, I made a Popplet that says: “What are fun facts about Winter?”, I posted this question in the middle bubble and chose a color background to represent myself. I then went in and gave a few responses which branched out from the middle bubble. For example I said: “the tallest snowman was 113 foot tall”. This was a unique fact that showed up in the same color as the question I posted because I logged in as myself to answer. This would be a fun way to formally assess students’ progress on topic knowledge because you would be able to upload a general question and have students go in and give a response. Each students bubble will appear in a new color, and have their name above the written statement; allowing the teacher to log info given. Another neat feature of Popplet, is that students can respond to each other’s bubbles in order to expand on a statement.
As an educator, I would use this in several ways such as individual knowledge collection, class polls, and even have children make their own for a project grade. I think that Popplet is 3rd through 5th grade appropriate, because it is allowing children to log on and answer questions appropriately. Also, it is more an at home or in lab activity since information given should be researched and well thought out. I also could see this being a study tool for higher grades, since the questions that students have can be posted in the middle bubble and then answered in various ways by fellow students. I would use this as a study tool like we currently use Saki, having students respond to at least two other students posts. I can see that there may be possible issues with this program, such as students not being honest about who they are at login, responding inappropriately to other students’ post, and not taking the course work seriously because it would be electronic. However, I think that any online coursework can pose problems for teachers and students because not all students will follow given directions. I feel that with strong teacher involvement, parent involvement, and strict class electronic rules, this program can be an asset to the classroom.
Bubbl - Brooke Craig
Bubbl is similar to the other Web 2.0 tool that I chose, Popplet; but instead of allowing students to work in groups or as a class, Bubbl allows a single student to work on an online site to brainstorm for a project or paper. The way that Bubbl works is by having students start with an initial idea or statement that will go in the middle of the site. After an initial idea is posted, students are able to create sub categories, here students can type in information that is relevant to the beginning topic. This can go on for 5 or more sub categories, as well as being able to type in sub headers for information that may be important to your topic. Another neat factor is that you can go in and list or star the information by importance. While Popplet is able to be used in order to obtain a grade, I think Bubbl can prove just as effective since the information can be viewed online. This can be helpful in many ways for the student, teacher, and parent to see the progress of the information gathering process. This would be helpful in the situation that a student is confused and needs some guidance, has illegible handwriting, or if you need to report the information that is being gathered to a parent or resource worker.
While Bubbl is helpful, I can see that there are a few negatives that can be seen in the process, such as: children being lost in the information, repeating information, or writing information that is not helpful to the topic or subject. However, I feel that as a teacher having access to this Bubbl would pose as a benefit to the student because I would be able to guide the data collection process by seeing and informing the children of where they are at in the process. Overall, Bubbl is helpful in a higher level class setting such as fourth through sixth grade; as well as beneficial to myself as I complete my DOC paper!